17 posts tagged “development”
A few things concerning my "Japanese Mythbusters" type column. I'm at the point where my personal well is dry and I need some user input to find more stuff to bust or ultimately prove true. When it comes to gaming, there are always exceptional exceptions like 78 year old Akira Kitajima who keeps his FPS gaming PC up to spec regularly plus writes Japanese language FAQs/Walkthroughs on his personal website. Hell, he's so die hard he uses an American Keyboard. Browsing his site, he seems like anything but a Japanese gamer geek, having traveled the world, played sports, etc. The stereotype being a Hikkikomori.
>Japan's entire attitude about gaming seems to be going in a
look-don't-touch direction, what with Japan's own games >advancing
mainly in aesthetics and storytelling and not really in gameplay.
For RPGs, sure. But for other genres? I'd hardly call anything of action and the subcategory thereof "look don't touch." Though don't touch is a very important principle in Danmaku Hell shooters. Touch a bullet, you're dead! But I know that's not what you're talking about.
>How popular are America's NBA, MLB, NFL, and NASCAR on Japanese TV?
Baseball is pretty popular since some major Japanese aces have been imported by American teams. Matsui, Ichiro, Daisuke, wow, I don't even like baseball but I know a few names. The rest might show up on some premium sports channel, but they're pretty much ignored in favor of home grown versions. Soccer is a close second behind baseball, and soccer hasn't caught on for squat in the USA. Really, America is a great big soccer island. I'm sure any European readers want to strangle me since I'm not calling it "football." And behind the real football according to the rest of the world is high school baseball. Yes, high school baseball gets on national TV. Arguably, sports is the ultimate war metaphor, so of course there's all kinds of unwarranted pride coursing through peoples and "their" teams.
>Could you write a post about the state of American software translation in Japan?
It's certainly on an upswing with Fallout 3, GTA4, just about every major release on 360 is getting localized to Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if the localization is done entirely in the USA. I mean translation, editing, any necessary programming or in-game artwork is all done here in the US for European releases(at least it was when I was at Lucas Arts.) Likewise, Japanese development teams are responsible for integrating English and other languages when their games get released elsewhere. For more on that specific nightmare, check JC's blog, he's had to wrestle with that far more than I have.
>I read interviews with the producers of Silent Hill and Lost Odyssey
who said that one of their problems is that they >want to use cutting
edge American tech like Unreal Engine 3, but that it has a ton of
documentation that gets late >and poor translation into Japanese, if at
all.
This is a huge problem. The overall statement of engine documentation has a lot of choice 4 letter words you can assign to it, but I'll just leave it as "poor." Unreal Engine has 1 master, namely it's creator; Epic Games.
Also, the amount of work required when you start taking an engine and deviating it from the type of game it originally was used to make, goes up exponentially as you deviate. Epic can't even adequately support star Western developers such as Bioware, so I can't even think of how poor they are to Japanese companies. Unreal killed my enjoyment of Mass Effect. Random framerate drops, random pauses to load, the scene going from a bland version of Killer 7 to realistic over the course of 3 seconds, etc. And this is Bioware. They have experience making engines like the Aurora Engine they used for the original Never Winter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic games. Bioware is a company with top tier talents working for them and they still struggle. That's telling.
Unreal relies on cutting edge hardware, which game consoles may not always keep up. I am not sure if normal mapping and all that dynamic lighting that Unreal has in their tech demo is hardware accelerated by consoles. It sure is on the PC they use to show off the tech to executive bean counters that just like the sounds of those buzzwords.
For those uncertain as to what normal mapping is, it's an "invisible" texture layer that just contains data on what the mathematical normal or "up vector" is for any given point on a model. It lets you add amazing amounts of detail to a model without actually having to sit there and actually push the polys. However, the normal map data is used by the shader so until the lighting kicks in, you won't see the detail. And yay, I just used that linear algebra I busted my brain on at the University. Woo hoo! To see how to make a really good normal map and what it can do, check this tutorial out at CGTextures. Scroll about 2/3s of the way down to see a rock texture rendered with a normal map. No modeling required. Pretty amazing tech no doubt, but it comes at a steep hardware cost.
Now, if Epic provides a complete manual, that places them miles ahead of just about every other game engine out there. A previous employer of mine used Torque Game Engine. The original version of that engine would just...die if you tried to make something other than a corridor shooter. Support consists of trolling Garage Games' forum and praying someone tried to do what you did. A lot of people are trying due to the low price and cross platform abilities that TGE boasts. Their scripting language is basically C# with some variables already set which is another very good thing going for it. C# is so easy, I've been able to use it.
Other middleware could be different. Havok's cloth physics is getting around for making character costumes behave in a life-like manner. Soul Calibur IV and Folklore use it, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Seeing how specialized this middleware is, they can really fine tune their interfaces and make their product easy to implement and properly support it.
To me, Unreal Engine on a console has become a scarlet letter/seal of disapproval and it decreases my interest in the product. I might go back and play all these Unreal engine games when I upgrade my PC when(maybe if) I move back to the USA, but by then I'm sure I'll have forgotten about them or decide not to ultimately buy them due to other PC gaming issues like DRM.
If there's one thing SquareEnix has demonstrated repeatedly in the past, it's that they know how to make something look good without bleeding edge tech.
This is a pretty neat tool for prototyping or even making a fast, 2D game. It's called GameMaker and it's an amazing tool that can help with rapid prototyping. Check it out!
Omega Five is an amazing feat. The graphics and sound are absolutely amazing, but they fit below XBLA's original 50 meg limit. Crazy huh?
I've been wondering what kind of direction to give the audio guy. With art, I'm familiar, I can give rather specific critiques and even do some concept art on my own(even if it's crude.) But audio? I can give a theme and then upon hearing a draft of the work and respond with basic stuff like the tempo isn't quite right, some of the instrument choices feel out of place but I feel like I'm trying to salvage the original rather than guide the creation of something better. That and it doesn't help that I get other songs stuck in my head and I feel like they work. I will improve my ability to imagine what something should sound like as well as look like!
Fortunately for me, the audio guy I work with is very understanding and I can easily talk with him and tell him my concerns.
Namely, the power of really simple techniques in sprite art. I've been trying my hand at doing sprites and going over board on selective outlining, manual anti-aliasing and just making a muddy mess. Guilty Gear does very little of this. It's a formula I can follow, as long as I draw decent frames to base the technique off of. Fan artist Prophetic Dream does a nice job of using GG's techniques in a small scale.
Of all the sprite art tutorials I've found, this has been my favorite, highly technical one. It's wordy, in Japanese but the illustrations say more than a thousand words.
Dot E Kouza
The first 10 Step list covers a lot of important aspects from smoothly translating freehand curves to pixels(Step 3) to calculating pallets based on 8-bit RGB values(Step 7, with more than just grays calculated here.) Pallet construction has been giving me the most grief so far. Just because 2 colors look different enough zoomed in at 500%+ doesn't mean they'll be differentiable at actual size.
Back to the drawing board.
Well, my indie project has me working with 2 very talented and different people. One fellow told me he's not very good at giving time estimates. The other needs hard, fast deadlines to get anything done. I haven't really thought of myself as much of a manager and I've already got this challenge in front of me.
I'll think of something, I have to in order to get this done.
Oh Xbox Live Arcade. You had so much promise which is now...I wouldn't say totally gone, but unless something drastic happens, all I can say is it *had* so much promise. I am an Xbox360 owner. I have purchased about 10 games on XBLA. I've tried about a dozen beyond that at the very least. I've used the Xbox Dashboard on a near daily basis so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to what I dislike about the whole deal. Heck, my Xbox 360 is idling RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS!
Irritation 1: Interface
How many menus I need to go through to get to the games I want to play will get a rant on its own, but the Marketplace for games is terrible. I mean, just freaking terrible. I love how the highlighted color of the text you've selected becomes unreadable. I selected the Spotlight in the Marketplace and "Games" is in this warm grayish white color that's barely legible on the light vermilion background. It certainly doesn't stand out compared to "Top Games" and non-selected options.
I'm looking at a list of games. Full Game - DOOM is selected now. On the right side of the screen is just the name of the game, the rating and a bunch of text scrolling by faster than I can care to read it. Yeah, that really makes me interested. No, it doesn't! What about a few screen shots? A genre? As a consumer, I'm lazy and I'd like to see cool features outlined quickly. *Online Co-op. *Competitive Death Match. *OVER 9000 LEVELS!!!!!! *Smokin' 3D Graphics. You get the idea. I figure everything has been remastered in HD and 5.1 sound so stop wasting your electrons scrolling that.
Say, some of that stupid text actually got me to hit the A button and learn more. I see a link to the demo, full game and any extra crap gamer pictures or whatever if available. At least they finally list the price of the dang thing here. Oh. Do I get any new info on the game? NO! Same lame text from above. The only new info I see is the developer or publisher. Most likely the publisher.
I perused the video interface. Wow. The preview text is a lot shorter. Like, 1, or maybe 2 sentences! Plus I can see a 30 second video preview. I'd like to see a game trailer like that, rather than go to a separate trailers category. Videos get a "Top Videos" list but do games? NO! The games page gets advertisements for TV shows. I guess I see where the money is being made...Quality certify video: make a tester watch it once. Certify a game? You have to pour over the interface, check it for general stability bugs, etc. It's not nearly as easy. You need a tester that really knows what he or she is doing.
Irritation #2! COMMUNITY!
I have an inane confession to make. When cellular phone plans cost $50/month and you had 10 minutes of non-peak time, I used Xbox Live to voice chat with my best friend who was 500 miles away. It was win. People on XBL build clans, teams, you name it for the games they play.
Integrating the community into the marketplace was a revolution that Amazon.com gets a lot of credit for. They introduced a system where you could see the sales ranking, but the biggest boon was you saw what else purchasers of the book you were currently looking at also bought. Free advertising at its finest.
Here's another thing that bugs me. Release slots. Xbox Live Arcade only releases 2 new games a week. I understand this. They want these 2 games to have a full week of being in the spot light and have a chance to sell. Yeah, I know. It doesn't end up working that way due to the clunky interface burying the game. So there's 52 weeks in a year, 104 XBLA games released a year. A lot of developers are upset over how hard it is for them to get their game out.
What better way to get people involved and democratize some of these release lists! Every month, we players pick from a pool of whatever XBLA game has passed certification and is ready for release. Honestly, I'd like to vote for green lighting games too. Let's see here, a port of another game I don't care about or a cute happy co-op dungeon crawling RPG that has a good camera! *Votes* Heck, I'd vote several times a day and try to stuff the ballot box if I really saw a game concept that appealed to me.
I almost missed Omega Five because I saw it, I got excited about it, and then weeks passed before I came out and I forgot about it. Maybe a release reminder would have helped me there. Notify RandomEncounters whenever a game that's cool gets released. Or a 2D shooter. Or some other genre alert.
Irritation 3: Separate the Retro Stuff
They do this with Xbox Originals already. Most developers of original games don't want their products lumped next to buggy ports of 10+ year old console or arcade games.
Countless people I've spoken to want to see this happen. I understand that porting a console game to XBLA is a much bigger endeavor than barfing it up on Wii Virtual Console. Xbox ports get network play functionality, leader boards, achievements, tutorials, demos, etc. Still. Separate please. Thanks!
Irritation 4: Game Rep & User Reviews
I know this should have been in Irritation 2, but it's important enough to get its own section. I really think they're necessary. I don't know of any major American games website that doesn't let the users post their own reviews alongside their staff reviews. If storage and bandwidth is too much of a problem, let us give a game reputation like players get it. I can prefer or avoid a player. When I avoid the player, I can list a reason from obnoxious behavior to leaving early, etc. So let us rank games.
Conclusion
These are all changes I'd want to see just as a gamer. I'd heard about a vicious restructuring of royalties from some very irate XBLA developers, but I personally don't know and can't comment on that.
I owe huge thanks to a friend of mine for helping me prototype my game. I thought I planned absolutely everything out. There are so many fine details my initial Game Design Document left out. Like movement speeds in pixels per second. My friend and engineer gave me something playable(it doesn't crash and absolute minimum game play has been completed.) By not having a lot of other things done, it gave me ideas for other things I want to do with the game. Perhaps if I ever get around to making a sequel, I've got fodder for it.
No matter how tight you think your initial design is, prototypes are very very helpful.
Interview with Super Mario Galaxy's director, Yoshiaki Koizumi.
It seems as though in Japan, the director of a game is like the director of the movie. Highly responsible for all aspects of where the development goes. Where he or she points, the rest of the team begins to build towards that point.
Good read.
I wanted to be better about posting here, but I haven't. For this I apologize.
The Job Hunt Stats:
Applications Sent = 23
Attempts at Using Network to get somewhere = 6
Interviews Held = 1 Phone Interview, 2 in-Person(outside industry position.) 1 recruiter called, didn't identify the recruiting agency she works with or provide me her last name.
Offers Received for a full time position = 0
Playing Games:
Went to a friend's house. This friend buys games like crazy, has a drop dead gorgeous HDTV, surround sound system and oh so comfy couch. Plus a cat that likes to rub up against my feet.
Played
-PAIN for PS3
-Assassin's Creed for 360.
-Folk Lore for PS3(different visit)
-Phoenix Wright 3(one of the few indulgences I allowed myself.)
Games I really want to get:
-Zack and Wiki for Wii.
-Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.
-Mass Effect for 360.
On my personal game dev front:
-Still begging and pleading for an engineer I trust to help with a prototype for the last month.
-Still drawing on paper to just get better at it since I'll most likely be doing all the artwork for it.
-Stopped trying to get the prototype.
-Going back to just generating and writing down ideas again.
-Watching the feces hit the fan over the Gamespot firing debacle.
